Once More Unto the Breath
by kangaroo2010
Summary: He's just a boy, she's just a girl, and their love really does have a weird habit of changing the world. The original "ship that should have been" Written for Zutara Month 2010


Zuko didn't know what stung worse, the toe he might have just broken, or the blue eyes that haunted his dreams.

Content Warning: Tobacco use, some strong language, Zuko being an idiot. The beginning of a new AU.

* * *

**The Blue Spirit and the Painted Lady**

HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN BORED. After all, he always had been before.

It wasn't anyone's fault, really. The play itself was a good one, based on two minor characters from _Love Amongst the Dragons, _one of the classics of Fire Nation theatre. Like any _noh _play, _Love Amongst the Dragons, _if staged in full, could last all day, but _The Heart of the River _was different, relatively short, succinct, with only a few characters and staged in modern Nihongo rather than the classic, outdated form of the language most _noh _plays were performed in. It had a single, simple plot line, the epic love of the Blue Spirit and the Painted Lady, with all the twists and turns and melodramatics that one could wish for. There were epic sword fights and cackling villains and tear-soaked protestations of eternal love and just the right amount of comic relief, and who could ever forget the hush that always fell over the theatre when the Blue Spirit sacrificed himself to save the Painted Lady? Everyone knew, of course, that it wasn't permanent, that the tears of the Painted Lady would move the gods' hearts to mercy, that Agni Himself would come down from on high to reward their devotion, restore the Blue Spirit to life, punish the wicked, and preside over the inevitable wedding. Still, though, it was _theatre, _and Zuko had never had much patience for anything, much less _theatre. _And yet…

_And yet…_

_ He was anything but bored…_

_ He was having the time of his life…_

He blamed his children. They were, quite simply, _enraptured, _all five of them carried away by the drama unfolding before them. They booed the Blue Spirit's wicked master, cried out when the Blue Spirit and the Painted Lady first met as enemies, swords drawn, sighed as the heroes fell in love, cheered when the Blue Spirit turned on his evil lord, gasped when the Blue Spirit took an arrow meant for the Painted Lady, his one true love. It was all so silly, so..._so…_

He reached over, slid his hand into his wife's, marveled at the contrast of her dark brown skin against his paleness as her fingers wrapped themselves tightly around and between his own. He lifted their hands to his lips, pressed a soft kiss into her knuckles, turned to gaze into her eyes, as deep and blue as the ocean itself, _but far more beautiful._

_ Oh, so much more beautiful…_

"You see?" she said, the crown in her hair glittered bright and golden as the rising sun as she smiled at him. "I told you that you'd have fun."

He laughed and bowed his head. "And, as usual, you were right."

She rolled her eyes, even as she leaned up and forward and kissed him, the sparkle in her eyes letting him know that she was aware of the effect she was having on him. Electricity crackled up and down his spine. "And don't you forget it."

He smiled, chuckled as he bent down to kiss her again, _oh, how he loved kissing her, he could kiss her all-_

A hand grasped his shoulder, gave him a shake. "Nephew?"

He frowned, turned, wondering what could possibly..._what? _

"Uncle?" he asked, shock hitting him like a bucket of ice water on a hot summer's day. _This can't be, Uncle is gone, he passed away years ago…_

But his uncle was there, frowning, round face etched with concern. "Zuko, my boy, wake up."

He shook his head. "But I'm not asleep," he said, "and what are you doing here, Katara, do you see..._this…_" His voice trailed off as he turned to his wife, _but his wife was gone. _The children were gone, _the Royal Box at the Royal Theatre in Miyako was gone, _the play was gone and in its place was-

_Nothing. _Just his office, the same as it ever was. He turned away, looked down at his desk, the surface covered with papers and scrolls, quills standing up in inkpots, a long-forgotten cup of tea sitting amidst the chaos, an ashtray overflowing with stubbed out cigarettes resting at his elbow.

"Are you alright, Zuko?" his uncle asked, his voice low and shot through with worry.

Zuko shook his head, rubbing the heel of his hand into his good eye. "I...I think so? I don't know...I was…" _I had a wife, her name was…I don't remember…_ He stopped rubbing, blinked until spots stopped dancing across his vision. _We had children, two…no…four…five? _"I...I don't know…" _She was…beautiful… _He pushed himself back from his desk, wincing as his back creaked and popped. "How long have I been asleep?"

_Blue eyes…_

_ Her eyes were blue…_

Uncle shrugged, tutting as he helped Zuko up off the floor. "Only the gods know, my boy, the way you've been working. Thank Agni Himari-san came to tell me you hadn't made it back to your room again." Uncle brushed stray cigarette ash from Zuko's robes, clucking his tongue against his teeth as he surveyed the scene unfolding before him. "You work too hard, Nephew."

Zuko waved the comment away as he bent down to take a cigarette from the box on his desk. _Blue, blue…eyes of blue…_ "So you've told me, Uncle."

Uncle groaned. "And so I'll keep telling you until you _listen, _young man. You work too hard, you don't eat enough, don't sleep enough, and," he snatched the cigarette out of Zuko's mouth before Zuko could light it, "you smoke too much."

"You're one to talk," Zuko snapped, exhaustion and worry and only the gods knew what else crashing into a cacophony of stress and strain in his sleep-clouded mind. _And the dream…the dream was gone…_

_ Was it a dream…?_

_ Those eyes…_

Uncle sighed. "The occasional pipe with dinner is one thing, Zuko," Uncle said, as, Zuko couldn't help but note, _the old man had said a thousand-thousand time before. _"Smoking upwards of forty of _these,_" he continued, waving the cigarette he'd taken in front of Zuko's face, "a _day, _is quite another. And the quality!" He tossed the cigarette aside. "You're the Fire Lord now, Zuko, you don't have to keep smoking cheap Army-issue tobacco as if you were still a junior officer. And don't even get me started on that swill you insist on drinking!"

Zuko bit down on a few curses straight out of his days as a junior officer, in those long, dark days after his exile, _after his burning, _but before his rebellion, settling for snatching a fresh cigarette from the box and lunging out of his uncle's reach. "What," he said, lighting his cigarette with a snap of his fingers, "I thought you wanted me to drink more tea?"

Uncle clapped a hand to his face, every inch of his body tense with frustration. "That...that..._that __**garbage **_you chug by the liter is not _tea, _Zuko. It barely deserves the honor of being called a _liquid. _It's...it's…" Uncle waved his arms around, hands flapping as if he was trying to snatch the appropriate words from thin air. "It's...Agni Above, Zuko, I'm pretty sure they use it to strip rust from steel!"

Zuko took a deep drag from his cigarette, tried to let his stress flow out of him upon a cloud of smoke. As usual, it didn't work, but he didn't feel like that was reason to stop trying. "Well, _good. _Anything we can use to cut the military budget is fine by me!" He took another deep drag, and then another; the tobacco may not have helped with his stress, but it made him feel a bit more..._sanguine _about life, and that was worth something, he felt. "What time is it, anyways?" _And that dream…_

_ What was up with that __**dream**__…_

Uncle pointed at the clock ticking away in the corner. "Why don't you take a look?"

Zuko did, and immediately wished he hadn't. _Gods, the Hour of the Ox...that means… _He made his way around his desk, strode to the window, and threw open the shutters. _Oh…_

"Yes," Uncle said, walking up beside Zuko and laying a gentle hand upon his shoulder, "that is the sun glowing on the horizon, Zuko. You know you have a bed, right? A bed, and a suite of rooms, all fit for a Fire Lord?"

Zuko shot his uncle a glare. "I'm only blind in one eye, Uncle; I can see perfectly fine out the other one. I'm aware that I have a bed."

Uncle returned his angry glare with a look of soft, gentle frustration. "I'll believe that when you use it. When you're not passing out at your desk, you're dozing off in the library or sleeping in your old Army bedroll out on the balcony of your rooms. Never mind the security risk of that last one, _it's not healthy, Zuko." _Uncle grabbed Zuko by both shoulders, forced Zuko to look him in the eye, _or at least as best as I can do, Father only left me the one. _"You're about to turn twenty-six, _you'll work yourself onto an early pyre by twenty-seven if you don't stop this."_

Uncle was right. Zuko knew this, just as Zuko knew that down was down, up was up, and the sky was blue. Uncle was right, but Zuko didn't _want _his uncle to be right, so Zuko did the next best thing he could think of.

He got angry. After all, it was easier than confronting the truth of his uncle's words.

_And far easier than trying to parse apart the thin wisps and tatters that remained of his dream…_

"Yeah?" he snarled, throwing his uncle's hands from his shoulders and rearing back out of reach. "And what am I supposed to do about it, huh?" He stormed off, aware of how stupid he looked, stomping around the room, shouting and raving and doing his best impression of a windmill as he waved his hands through the air, his cigarette leaving intricate smoke patterns in its wake. "Have you seen the state of this country? No more than a decade-and-a-half my father was on the Scarlet Throne, but you'd never know it from the amount of damage he did! Two years now, and the economy is still a shambles, the treasury is _still _empty, the Earth Kingdom won't stop screaming about the colonies, but I can't just _hand _the colonized regions back, can I, some of those people have been there for almost a century and the Hanminjok are begging me to _not _hand them back over to Ba Sing Se, and the Avatar keeps prattling on about _restoring harmony _but how can I restore harmony when the half of my government that _isn't _implicated in one war crime or another spent most of my father's reign sitting in a jail cell or in exile, which means that they want to _kill _the first half, and now the Privy Council is telling me that they won't even _consider _putting my proposed constitution to the people unless I take a wife, _as if that's not the __**last **__thing that's on my mind, _because how can I even _consider _getting married when, again, the treasury is _still empty_ and we can barely afford to pay the military, _but we can't just __**disband **__the military without crashing what's left of the economy, _I can't even fully cancel the draft unless we start finding _jobs _for everybody,and..._and..._Uncle, are you listening?"

Uncle nodded, deep in thought, one hand stroking his beard. "Oh, yes, Nephew, every word...what was that about a wife?"

Zuko skidded to a halt, finished his cigarette, and angrily jammed it out in one of his office's many overflowing ashtrays. "Uncle, don't you dare…"

Uncle held up one hand, palm out, while the other continued calmly stroking his beard. "I'm serious, Zuko, because the Privy Council may be onto something…"

Zuko had been angry before, but now he was _furious. _He could feel his skin turning hot and red, and if he had started leaking steam from his ears, he would not have been surprised. "I'm serious, Uncle," he snarled through gritted teeth, "don't go there."

If Uncle noticed his rising fury, he gave no sign. Zuko shouldn't have been surprised, and yet, somehow, he was, at the very least, somewhat stunned. "The thing is, Zuko, you do need some help...someone to share your burdens…"

"Are you really going to stand there and pretend you didn't put the Council up to it, _Chief Minister?_"

"Who, me? Perish the thought. The point remains, though, that a wife would put a stop to all of this _sleeping in your office _business." Uncle turned his back on Zuko, hands clasped behind him as he began to make a slow circuit around the room. "Yes, a nice young beautiful girl…"

"_Uncle…"_

"Well, maybe not _nice, _you do seem to have a type from what I've heard, but _young _and _beautiful, _surely we can manage that…"

"_I'm warning you…"_

"Strong willed, independent minded, yes, that's _exactly _the kind of young lady we need around here…"

"_If you say one more word, I swear by all the gods, I will approve Duke Hojo's proposal and reinstitute the death penalty…"_

"Five years since you launched your rebellion at Yu Dao and ended that butcher Zhao's assault on the North before it could begin, two years since the Avatar defeated your father and you defeated your sister and took the throne, no wonder the people are getting restless…"

"_Stop it stop it __**stop it…**_**"**

"Yes, a royal wedding, some royal babies, that is _just _the sign of hope and stability the people need, we'll have to start the search _immediately _of course, good thing I have a proposal right here in my pocket…"

"_GRAAAA!" _With nothing left to do, Zuko pulled back his leg and kicked his desk with all his strength. It wasn't until he was hopping around his office, cradling his foot, that he remembered that he wasn't wearing any shoes.

"See, Nephew? That is just the kind of rash, ill-tempered act that a wife would put a stop to!"

_"KISS MY ASS UNCLE!"_

"I'll take that as agreement; I'll start the search this very afternoon."

"_WHO'S THE GODS-DAMN FIRE LORD AROUND HERE OH GODS I THINK I BROKE MY FUCKING TOE!"_

Uncle was clucking his tongue against his teeth again, shaking his head in disappointment. "Now, Zuko, how are you going to woo a beautiful young lady with language like that?"  
"_**GRAAAAA!"**_

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_What, you guys thought I was gonna skip Zutara Month? Psh..._

Okay, so, first thing's first, yes, the next chapter of my _Game of Thrones _fic will be posting. There are, like, only about four-ish chapters left, and after such a long wait for the "ending" (_so to speak_), I wanna try to post them all in one go. Failing that, you'll get the next one sometime this week.

Second thing, for Zutara Month this year, I want to try to make all my entries come from the same story/AU/what-have-you. I know, _I know, _I _always _say that, but I really think I can pull it off this year! That means that a lot will become clear about this AU as it goes on, but for now, the basics are that Zuko got exiled to the Army, he fought for a few years, he was going to be part of Zhao's invasion of the North, he found out Zhao was going try and kill a god, and decided to launch a mutiny. That snowballed into a civil war which he won, all while Aang, Sokka, and Katara were doing their own thing, and now it's two years since the end of the War and Zuko, being Zuko, is trying to work himself into an early grave, or _onto an early pyre, _in Fire Nation parlance.

Unfortunately for his love of making himself suffer, the people of the Fire Nation _really _want an heir.

And..._scene!_

_Moving on! _In... *_checks time, sees it's 1:47 am in Texas_* In..._today's _episode, I guess, if all goes well, Katara will enter from stage south, and you might even get two for the price of one! _Stay tuned!_


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